THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 5, 1996 TAG: 9608030026
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: 74 lines
Government fact-finding commissions ought to find facts, report them and, perhaps, make recommendations. The reports should be objective.
In Richmond, the level of distrust between the two parties is such that we're seeing dueling panels.
Democrats appoint a panel to evaluate Gov. George F. Allen's environmental record. Republicans respond by setting up their own panel. We'll go out on a limb here and predict that the Democratic panel report will be critical and the Republican panel report favorable.
Both parties also had their own commissions to study juvenile justice. More dueling commissions are sure to follow.
What voters will get is double the number of bills to pay, since there will be two competing commissions for every problem. The money buys reports that are partisan documents, hence short on credibility.
In the 19th century, each political party in a city had its own newspaper. Readers knew which newspapers favored which parties. Readers expected a Democratic newspaper to slant the news to favor Democrats and a Republican newspaper to slant the news to favor Republicans.
Readers did not expect their papers to be objective, and they weren't.
But taxpayers should expect and demand that government fact-finding commissions find and report facts, the same as readers demand that a newspaper with a monopoly - that's most newspapers - print the facts. Change minds, diapers
A bumper sticker says, ``If you never change your mind, how do you know you have one?''
That's a good question.
People who think, often change their minds - not as often as a baby's diaper, but from time to time. Never changing a mind has roughly the same effect as never changing a diaper. A dream worth supporting
As a teenager, Clarissa E. McAdoo visited her grandmother's hometown of Suffolk each summer and dreamed of improving the city. That's a marvelously altruistic dream for a teenager to entertain.
Today, at age 40, McAdoo, former manager of development operations for the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority, is the new head of the Suffolk housing authority, helping to make that city better.
The Suffolk housing authority owns and operate 466 public-housing units and manages more than 1,200 subsidized-rent units. It has a rocky past. ``I'd like to get the board involved with a vision,'' McAdoo said. ``I want them to be a catalyst for change and growth.''
McAdoo must have certain leadership qualities: Her husband, Anthony, took her last name.
Her dream for improving Suffolk is deserving of all the support the city and its citizens can muster. What about prison crime?
One of the most appalling crimes committed in society is when law-enforcement employees break the law for money.
Their corrupt actions decrease respect for government and undermine our democracy.
Case in point: A Staunton prison guard was indicted recently by a grand jury on charges that he smuggled marijuana into the maximum-security Augusta Correctional Center and sold the illegal drugs to an inmate.
That inmate, incidentally, was serving 202 years for first-degree murder, robbery, use of a firearm and attempted escape. The prisoner was also indicted.
If Mark R. Stevens is found guilty, we hope he joins his marijuana customer behind bars. The killer ought to be dealt with less harshly: It is hard to understand how a convicted killer could be expected to turn down an offer of drugs for sale by one of his own jailers.
Persistent rumors about drugs and weapons in Virginia prisons cast suspicion upon the very people who have been charged with maintaining order in those institutions. Gov. George F. Allen made building prisons a priority. We urge him to take a good look at the people he has running them as well. by CNB